As several pundits, including Eric McErlain, James Mirtle, occasional IIHF.com correspondent Peter Adler, and even the Oakland Press's Pat Caputo have weighed in on the NHL's decision to contest Red Wings forward Jiri Hudler's decision to sign with Dynamo Moscow...

The Russian press has gone ga-ga about the NHL's decision to return Joel Kwiatkoski to SKA St. Petersburg because his rights belonged to that team (Sovetsky Sport's Pavel Lysenkov boldly declared that hockey will overtake soccer as Russia's #1 sport because "The NHL has finally decided to respect our contracts" and SKA president Alexander Medvedev suggested that the NHL has indeed decided to refrain from signing players with "obligations" to the KHL--Dynamo Moscow president Mikhail Golkov's comments to Lysenkov sound a bit silly:

July 11, Sovetsky Sport (roughly translated): The president of "Dynamo" Mikhail Golovkov has confirmed to the correspondent of Sovetsky Sport, Pavel Lysenkov, that Dynamo does not have an IIHF player transfer card for Hudler. But he doesn't agree with the NHL's claims:

"We didn't sign a player with an active contract. When his NHL contract ended, he did not conclude signing a operating contract. Detroit's offer was rejected, and he submitted for arbitration. As I understand, in the NHL an operating contract is considered a contract signed on paper. I talked to the agents of Hudler--they, too, do not see infringements from our party.

Hudler's European agent, Pavel Marsoun, confirmed as much to the Czech news agency CTK:

July 10, Sportoninoviny.cz (roughly translated): "We're not afraid. We don't think that we had a contract in the NHL. We consulted Dynamo in advace," he told CTK.